Month: February 2015

Moments when time stands still

Where were you when you heard that the Challenger exploded?  I was in the hallway outside my 6th grade classroom.  The school receptionist told me the news.

Where were you when you heard Princess Diana had died in a car crash in Paris?  I was in a bar in the Adirondacks.

Where were you when you heard that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center?  I was at my desk on the 31st floor of an office building downtown.  Matt called from LA to tell me what had happened.

I suspect that for my parents, when Kennedy was shot was one of these moments.  For my grandparents, perhaps one is when they heard the war ended.

What I’m not sure of is whether the experiences have to be brutal and sorrowful to have the power I’m describing.  If it’s true that Nana and Ba and Gaga and Pops could remember with pinpoint accuracy learning about the end of World War Two, that would suggest that positive news can have the same kind of stop-time power (though, maybe, when it comes to war, you’re already in a world so far removed from Good News that’s not true).  Unfortunately I can’t ask them, so I don’t know.

What will these moments be for Grace and Whit?  I always wonder.  For someone who believes so entirely in the importance of an ordinary life’s most mundane moments, I’m also aware that there are certain experiences that are so powerful and extraordinary that they create a different kind of awareness.  Time tilts off of its axis for a moment, and we never forget that shift.  These experiences also have the power of uniting us with our communities, countries, and the world.  I predict that anyone of my generation can tell you exactly where they were when they learned the three pieces of news I mention above.

If you’re approximately my age, can you?

 

 

The Alphabet of Right Now

In 2009, 2011, and 2013 I wrote posts about the “alphabet” of my life at that moment.  I like the construct as a way to capture the specific nuances of a moment, and reading Deborah Copaken’s piece The ABC’s of Adulthood, reminded me of it.  Seeing that it’s 2015, it seems time for my bi-annual Alphabet of Right Now.

A is for Aquaphor.  I’ve said it before, but it’s true: Aquaphor is my duct tape.  The stuff holds the universe together.  I slather it on everybody’s faces, because we all seem dry and chapped and it fixes small cuts and bruises.  There are very few questions for which Aquaphor isn’t a great answer.

B is for Billy Collins.  I’m on a huge Billy Collins kick.

C is for coffee.  Every morning.  I am looking forward to my morning coffee by about 5pm the night before.  It’s not an exaggeration to say it’s one of the highlights of my day.  When Matt brings me a cup in the morning, made exactly the way I like it, I view that as the height of romance.

D is for dog walking.  Grace walks a puppy on our street twice a week.  She absolutely adores the dog and I love the responsibility she’s taking on.  I have decided that 12 is the perfect age to start having this kind of ownership; when Whit is 12 I hope he also has a job a couple of days a week.

E is for Exeter.  My alma mater just named a wonderful-sound woman to be the principal.  A graduate of Princeton who is a sholar of American literature.  Sounds good to me!

F is for family dinner.  We do it as much as we can, averaging probably 2 or 3/week.  I love setting the dining room table, lighting candles, and sitting down together.  The actual dinners sometimes include some bickering and people being annoyed at each other, but the memories are all absolutely golden.

G is for gratitude.  Not a word I love, but a practice I feel very committed to.  Sunday night compliments, talking before bed, noticing and making mention of things that touch and impress and move us: all priorities for our family.

H is for hockey.  So. Much. Hockey.  Grace has now started playing too, and that means all three of my family members are passionate hockey players.  Two kids playing on three teams between them results in a LOT of practices and games.  Not to mention a LOT of gear in our living room.

I is for Instagram.  Twitter remains my favorite social media, but Instagram is definitely #2 (and T is definitely taken).

J is for Just Be Here Now.  I wear a “be here now” necklace a lot.  I think of the Colin Hay line all the time.  It’s fair to say this is my mantra.

K is for Kilimanjaro.  An experience that Matt and I shared that I think about all the time, and wrote about recently.

L is for #likeagirl.  I loved the Superbowl ad that promoted the tag line and have loved that footage since I saw it for the first time a while ago.  I won’t lie though: I feel a lot of anxiety about the plunge in self esteem that happens to most girls in puberty.

M is for meditation. I meditate regularly – 5 minutes! – and which I’m happy to see Matt adopting as part of his regular routine.  We both read 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works–A True Story by Dan Harris this summer and adored it.

No is for no.  Learning to say it.  Maybe too well.

O is for On a Beam of Light.  My current favorite picture book (and Whit’s, too).  Love.

P is for poetry.  Poetry has been an important part of my life since before college, but there are certain seasons in my life when I feel its pull particularly strongly.  I’m in one now.

Q is for quiet.  I prefer quiet.  It’s not always fair to my children, who are rambunctious and occasionally not-quiet.  But it’s simply my preferred way of being, and I’m sorry to say (for them) that that preference is get more pronounced as I get older.

R is for reading.  Fiction, non-fiction, essays, poems, Young Adult, graphic novels, magazines: anything.  Read it all.  Watching Grace and Whit read is one of the central joys of my life.  You can see what I’ve been reading lately here.

S is for snow.  It was a very dry winter and then, in the blink of an eye, Juno changed that.  We got 24 inches Over the 26-28 and it has continued to snow.  Another 16 inches with Linus.  Driving is a nightmare.  Even Grace and Whit are sort of over it (which is really saying something).

T is tween. Help.  This stage is proving complicated, and in no small part precisely because I don’t want to talk about it.

U is underneath.  How things feel right now.  Over 5 feet of snow and more coming.  In 3 weeks.  I’m a Bostonian and Matt is from Vermont and we do not generally find snow to be daunting.  But this is a whole new world.

V is for vacation.  We’re off soon on a trip to Europe with my parents.  I look forward to introducing Grace and Whit to the city in which I lived as a small child.

W is for writing.  I still struggle to own the title of “writer” but it’s clear to me at this point that I will write for the rest of my life.  Hopefully here, maybe elsewhere.  Writing for me means paying attention and marveling at what I see, turning the small murky stones of my ordinary life over in my hands to see the shimmer of mica on their surface, and it is integral to who I am in this world.

X is a really hard one.  X-ray?  Xylophone?  Any ideas?

Y is for yoga.  I’ve been a pretty-regular yoga practitioner for 15 years now, a fact that shocks me when I write it.  I recently read my friend Rebecca Pacheco‘s gorgeous book, Do Your Om Thing: Bending Yoga Tradition to Fit Your Modern Life, and I’ll be sharing my review in a week or two.  Spoiler alert: the book is fantastic.

Z is for zzzz (sleep).  Turning off the screens half an hour or more before bed, going to bed at the same time, rarely drinking any wine, meditating.  All are helping me sleep.  Which is my drug of choice these days.

Camp is tremendously valuable for both boys and girls

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Sunset at the beach at our camp, August, 2014

Camp was a very important part of my life.  I went to the same camp, on Cape Cod, for many summers, including four years of a junior counselor training program and two years as a counselor.  It’s a profound joy for me to watch both of my children attend and love the same camp now.  I couldn’t possibly be more of a believer in what camps offer children.

Camp is a place that kids can be away from their parents, a place they can be joyfully rambunctious and experiment with new activities, skills, and experiences, a place they can meet and get to know friends who are different from their friends at home.  I place tremendous value in the out-of-their-regular-life aspect of camp, and in both of our childrens’ cases they went without a friend from home.

I learned recently that our camp, which is coed, is full for girls but not yet for boys.  Apparently all-boys camps are also less full than all-girls camps.  I find this phenomenon fascinating.  What is it about?  Do boys want to go away less?  This is hard for me to believe.  Do parents feel camp is less vital or valuable for boys?  Again, this surprises me, but maybe it’s true.  Is there increased competition for sports-specific camps when it comes to boys?  This, there may be some truth to.

For us, and I speak for both Matt and me here, we feel that camp is equally as important for a girl as for a boy.  We didn’t hesitate to send Whit, as I had Grace, the very first summer he was old enough (8 years old).  Both of our children were excited about going away that first summer (and every summer since).  I didn’t feel different at all about sending my children to camp.  In both cases I felt some trepidation and sorrow about saying goodbye (not really about missing them, but more about the recognition that I’m already here in my life).  But more than anything, I felt excited for them, and downright delighted to watch them fly.

There’s also such huge value, in my opinion, in the relationships that develop between children and their counselors.  Where else in their lives do kids get to form close, loving bonds with young adults, particularly ones who are in aggregate such terrific role models? In my view this is equally as important for boys and for girls.

I did have one boy-specific moment when I observed Whit with his counselors, at pick-up, certainly, but even at drop-off.  I watched the boys play Gaga Ball and felt like I was watching puppies: they were freed to be physical and rowdy, to be joyful and affectionate, to run and jump and yell.  So much of modern life seems to tell boys to be quieter and softer and I distinctly remember watching Whit and thinking: oh, wow, at last, a place he can just be a boy (I realize this a stereotype even as I write it, but it is one that holds true in our family and thus I share it).

This reflection made me more convinced at the power of camp for my son, not less.  Both of our children are looking forward to the summer ahead, and so are we.

Are you a summer camp family?  Do you feel differently about camp for boys as you do about camp for girls? 

 

 

the beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable

Still there are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies.  At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny: only being.

– Albert Einstein